The attempt
The entry reads 22,801 digits, 28 May 2020, with a note recording seven hours and an Italian record for 2020. The oddly specific total is itself informative. Reciters who stop at a round number are usually working to a target; a figure like 22,801 suggests an attempt that ran until it ended rather than until it was finished.
Seven hours for that many digits is a rate of roughly fifty-four a minute, sustained without a recoverable error. Pi offers no structure to fall back on: the sequence is arbitrary, so a reciter who loses their place cannot reason their way back to it and the attempt closes at whatever digit the lapse occurred.
Where it sits on the list
Eleventh place on the Pi World Ranking List puts Vadacca just outside the leading ten. Directly above him is Jonas von Essen of Sweden with 24,063 digits, set on 7 March 2020, ten weeks before Vadacca's own attempt. Above that comes Paul Hearding of the United States with 30,448 from 2025 and Rajan Mahadevan of India with 31,811 from 1981.
The top of the table is a long way further up. Suresh Kumar Sharma leads with 70,030 digits from 2015, Rajveer Meena follows with 70,000 from the same year, and Chao Lu of China holds third with 67,890 from 2005. Vadacca's total is roughly a third of the leading figure and still the best recorded by an Italian.
A national record on an international table
The list's notes column does more than record times. It marks entries that stand as national or continental bests, which is how Vadacca's appears: Italian Record 2020. The same convention flags Hearding's entry as a North American record and Manuel Vergara Vial's as a South American one.
That tiering matters on a table this steep. The leading totals were set by a handful of reciters who each spent years on the attempt, and most countries have never had one. A national record on the pi list is usually the first serious entry from its country rather than the latest in a sequence.
What is documented — and what is not
The firm facts are the digit count of 22,801, the date of 28 May 2020, the listed duration of seven hours, the country, the eleventh-place ranking and the Italian record note. All come from the Pi World Ranking List itself.
Everything else is absent. The list carries a rules page that was not retrieved for this record, so the verification standard behind the entry is not set out here. It gives no age, birth year, city or occupation, names no venue or official, and records nothing about how Vadacca prepared or what he has done since.
Why 2020 produced two entries
Two of the list's leading results were set within ten weeks of each other in the spring of 2020: von Essen's 24,063 digits on 7 March and Vadacca's 22,801 on 28 May. On a table where the top three entries have stood since 2015 and two of the top eight date from the 1980s, a cluster like that is conspicuous.
The list does not explain it and this page does not speculate about causes. What the dates do establish is that the discipline is not extinct: a table dominated by results from 1981, 1987, 1995, 2005 and 2015 gained two new entries in a single season, and a further one, Hearding's, five years later.
| Person | Country | Milestone | Age / Stat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gaurav Raja | United States | Reciting 10,980 digits of pi at 15 | Age 15 |
| Luca Vadacca | Italy | Reciting 22,801 decimal places of pi | — |
| Sudhir Dwivedi | India | Reciting 45,000 decimal places of pi | — |
| Manuel Vergara Vial | Chile | Reciting 20,000 decimal places of pi | — |
| Rime Tarchihi | Lebanon | Reciting 10,000 digits of pi | — |
What is documented — and what is not
✓ Documented
- 22,801 digits of pi recited on 28 May 2020, listed at seven hours (Pi World Ranking List)
- Marked on the list as the Italian record for 2020
- Ranked eleventh all-time, below Jonas von Essen's 24,063 digits of March 2020
? Unverified, disputed or wrong
- The list's verification rules were not retrieved for this record
- No age, birth year, city or venue is published in this source
- No information about his preparation or later activity is documented
Questions people ask about Luca Vadacca
How many digits of pi did Luca Vadacca recite?
22,801, on 28 May 2020, in a session the ranking list records as seven hours.
Is it an Italian record?
The Pi World Ranking List marks the entry as the Italian record for 2020.
Where does he rank in the world?
Eleventh all-time on the list, just below Jonas von Essen of Sweden with 24,063 digits.
Who holds the world pi record?
Suresh Kumar Sharma of India tops the list with 70,030 digits, set in October 2015.
How old is Luca Vadacca?
No source in this record gives his age or birth year. The ranking list publishes names, countries, digit counts, dates and short notes only.
How was the attempt verified?
The list maintains a rules page that was not retrieved for this record, so the verification procedure is not described here.
Is Luca Vadacca on Wikipedia?
No Wikipedia article was confirmed in the sources gathered for this page. The source used here is the Pi World Ranking List.
Where is Luca Vadacca now?
No source in this record says. The documented trail is his 2020 entry on the ranking list.
Quick quiz: how well do you know Vadacca’s story?
How many digits of pi did Luca Vadacca recite?
What does the ranking list call the attempt?
How long did it take, according to the list?
Sources
- Pi World Ranking List – Pi — Pi World Ranking List
Checked by the Geniuses.club editorial team. Ages are given as of September 2026.
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